> I wonder if there will ever be a challenge to Marbury v. Madison.
An excellent question. Marbury isn't itself so much a problem as how courts — and the All-Writs Act — have implemented the basic principle. But people have gone along with expansive judicial review for two centuries now, so it's pretty much locked in as "how things are done."
Congress could still limit the reach of Marbury without a constitutional amendment, I think: Under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause, Congress could pass a law saying, for example, some or all of the following:
1. Only SCOTUS has the power to declare an act of Congress (and/or a federal regulation) unconstitutional; a lower court's declaration of unconstitutionality is simply an advisory opinion that has the effect of putting the case in question on hold. (The latter part would need more thought as to the operational details.)
2. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality has no effect unless agreed to by at least a 7-2 vote.
3. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality can be overridden by, say, a 3/5 vote of each of the House and Senate, subject to the usual rules about presidential vetoes and pocket vetoes.
Is Congress likely to do any of the foregoing? Probably not — but there might be at least some bipartisan support for cautiously shifting more power back to the elected political branches.
I’m not sure Congress can regulate the Supreme Court’s voting rules, but I agree with your first point. We should’ve done that during the Warren court and stripped the Court of jurisdiction to challenge law on social and moral issues.
> We should’ve done that during the Warren court and stripped the Court of jurisdiction to challenge law on social and moral issues.
Without the Warren Court's decisions in Brown v. Board or Cooper v. Aaron ("separate but equal" schools), we likely would have had even more race-related social upheaval in the 60s than we actually did. Robert Caro's books on LBJ recount how he (LBJ) had to work very hard and skillfully to get civil- and voting-rights legislation past decades-long Southern congressional blockades — Southern committee chairman, plus Senate filibusters — and even then it was a near-run thing.
Without SCOTUS- and Fifth-Circuit intervention — back then, the "Mighty Fifth" was far more liberal than today — desegregation would have taken years longer, maybe even decades. The race riots and other violence we saw in the 60s (which I remember very well from childhood, including living in a Washington D.C. suburb during the riots after MLK's assassination) would likely have been even worse.
> I’m not sure Congress can regulate the Supreme Court’s voting rules
For its internal purposes the Court can certainly make any voting rules it wants. But I'd submit that Congress has the power (under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause) to limit what external effect is to be given to Court votes that don't rise to a congressionally-specified threshold.
An excellent question. Marbury isn't itself so much a problem as how courts — and the All-Writs Act — have implemented the basic principle. But people have gone along with expansive judicial review for two centuries now, so it's pretty much locked in as "how things are done."
Congress could still limit the reach of Marbury without a constitutional amendment, I think: Under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause, Congress could pass a law saying, for example, some or all of the following:
1. Only SCOTUS has the power to declare an act of Congress (and/or a federal regulation) unconstitutional; a lower court's declaration of unconstitutionality is simply an advisory opinion that has the effect of putting the case in question on hold. (The latter part would need more thought as to the operational details.)
2. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality has no effect unless agreed to by at least a 7-2 vote.
3. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality can be overridden by, say, a 3/5 vote of each of the House and Senate, subject to the usual rules about presidential vetoes and pocket vetoes.
Is Congress likely to do any of the foregoing? Probably not — but there might be at least some bipartisan support for cautiously shifting more power back to the elected political branches.